Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Ride to Time Bad a Never

On a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia last weekend, I got in a bike ride on the Colonial Parkway, which extends from Jamestown to Yorktown via Williamsburg. The parkway is a scenic road with a surface of stone embedded in something like concrete. Speed limit is 45 mph and the car rattles quite a bit along the surface. On a bike, it's a whole body vibrating experience better than that of riding on cobblestones, but hardly conducive to a smooth, relaxing ride.

Jiggling along the 7 miles from Williamsburg to Jamestown, I noticed that my bike bottle kept rotating leftwards in its cage on the bike frame. As a result, its imprinted slogan read out in reverse, yielding the title of this post, over and over. Contemplating this phrase provided distraction from the tooth-chattering ride.

It actually made surprisingly good sense, if read in pseudo Irish-speak. Why ride? To never have a bad time. To keep from being slow. To maintain understanding of your own pace and ability. To stay healthy. They're all pretty good reasons, and decent explanations of why I enjoy a good ride. I also ride for scenery, which the road certainly offered. I tend to ride to release tension though, which this ride induced instead. However, at a time when I could have easily seen myself chucking the ride and turning back, I instead found wisdom from my rotating water bottle that reminded me of all the fun of just being out on a bike on a summer day. Spinning around can indeed help change your perspective, especially when it happens in the opposite-than-usual direction.Vegetarian recommendation: Food for Thought in Williamsburg, Virginia has several interesting veggie options (some vegan). They're on Richmond Road. Probably the best veggie food we've had there outside of ethnic restaurants, and certainly the best selection. In the ethnic category, we enjoyed Emerald Thai as well.